1. Field of the Invention:
This invention relates to a method of electrolytic treatment such as plating and an apparatus for carrying out the method, particularly a method and apparatus suitable for electrolytic treatment, such as local plating and local electrolytic polishing of elongated materials such as hoop, wire and rod materials.
2. Description of the Prior Art:
Heretofore, to obtain locally electrolytically treated or locally plated hoop materials, it has been widely used to stick insulating tapes or coat insulating paint to portions of the materials not to be treated and then to perform the electrolytic treatment. This method, however, requires an apparatus for sticking tapes to or coating with paint the portions not to be treated and troublesome and skill-requiring operations for the coating and removal of the tapes or coated paint.
Moreover, to obtain local plating it has been suggested that a material is brought in contact with rollers to perform plating only the portions of the material not in contact with the rollers or guided by means of a particular channel-like guide to perform plating of one side surface of the material, which forms sealing means with the contacted portions of the material for preventing the other side surface of the material from being in contact with a treating liquid. It has also been suggested that a material is brought into contact with outer surfaces of two spaced drums or is brought into contact with a treating liquid adhering to rollers, which are also anodes and partially immersed in the treating liquid, to perform plating of portions along the length of the material. It has further been suggested to perform a partial plating by the use of resilient packings tightly enclosing or accommodating a treating liquid.
These prior methods do not necessarily provide a satisfactory answer for the partial plating and have disadvantages in that it is very difficult to apply to a mass-production, to obtain uniform quality of treated materials and to vary in shape and location of partially plated portions of the material and apparatuses are generally bulky and expensive. In general, hitherto used apparatus including these above mentioned ones are apt to be large because of many rollers bending the material into treating liquid. When these rollers are operated, the transferred material may be subjected to a great force from the rollers resulting in deformation and breakage of the material and limitation of feeding speed of the material owing to the rollers will obstruct the speedup of the treatment. Apparatuses intended to avoid these disadvantages are further apt to be more bulky and expensive. If the rollers are small in diameter, there is tendency of the rollers to severely act on the material to give a permanently residual deformation to the material and if the straightening of such a deformed material is difficult, sufficiently large rollers in diameter are must be used to avoid the residual deformation, which make a series of apparatus bulky.
Since the treating liquid is in a top opened bath, which includes noxious or powerful material for the treatment, this noxious liquid will evaporate and splash in a workroom, so that the environment in the room will grow worse to a dangerous condition for workmen.
It is accordingly a principal object of the invention to provide a method and an apparatus for electrolytic treatment such as plating which overcome the above disadvantages in the prior art.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method and an apparatus for electrolytic treatment such as plating capable of partially plating portions of desired shapes and sizes at any desired locations on materials at high speed with ease.
It is further object of the invention to provide a method and an apparatus for electrolytic treatment such as plating capable of performing a variety of partial platings of elongated materials in size, shape and location by changing minimum numbers of parts of the apparatus.
It is still further object of the invention to provide an apparatus for electrolytic treatment such as plating which is so compact that the apparatus can be enclosed by a cover as a whole and utilize any ventilating means to provide a sanitary atmosphere in a workshop.
The above and other related objects and features of the invention will be apparent from a reading of the following description of the disclosure found in the accompanying drawings.